Heather Rainier (5 page)

“You became ill?”

“Yes. I’m a survivor. But being in and out of treatment left little time or energy for socializing or dating. You can imagine facing a potentially terminal diagnosis would hamper the libido and sex appeal. Plus, I’m a little…”

“What?”

“Chunky. The women in my family all tend to be curvy.”

The sexy grin that crossed his lips made her heart palpitate and her temperature rise another degree. “I like that about you too.”

“Anyway, I decided all those years ago that I wanted to save my virginity for my wedding night. I just didn’t plan on saving it
this
long. Now, I feel just a little ridiculous.”

With a slow shake of his head, Seth took her by the shoulders. “It’s not. It’s beautiful. You may know how to write really hot erotica but you’re innocent. I think it’s a perfect combination. But you need to stick to your guns. Remember your tattoo?” At her nod, he continued, “Why do you want me specifically to do the tattoo?”

“Because I trust you. We talked and I know you’d be careful and do a good job.” She had a feeling she knew where he was going with this line of conversation.

Damn it
.

“You’d never walk into an unfamiliar tattoo shop and ask the first person working there to tattoo your body without getting to know him, his level of skill, his style, and his sanitary standards. I’m sorry for the coarse analogy but it should be the same way with your virginity. You should know the person a while and trust them. If the tattoo artist lacks talent or has no clue what you want or need, then the tattoo would be ruined and so would the experience.”

“But the first time isn’t all that great anyway.”

Seth tilted his head slightly and shook it with a smile. “Not necessarily. You just illustrated my point. Given time and the right preparation, the first time can be special and meaningful. You shouldn’t throw it away. Last week, I redid a tattoo for a female customer. Located on the top of her foot. The original tattoo was done by an untalented hack. Her friend talked her into seeing me to fix it. I couldn’t even tell what it was.”

He pulled out his phone and showed her a photograph of what looked like a wilted head of cabbage. “That’s supposed to be a rose in full bloom. She wouldn’t wear anything but closed shoes because she was ashamed of it. She said halfway through getting it, she’d realized the train wreck it was going to be but didn’t have the guts to stop the artist from finishing it. It took a lot of work, but I fixed it. It’s bigger than what she’d originally intended but now she isn’t ashamed of her body art.”

He slid his finger on the touch screen and showed Jayne the “after” picture of a lovely pink rose, fully bloomed, with a hummingbird hovering over it.

“That’s beautiful.”

“I think so too. I made something she could tolerate out of it. All she’d originally wanted was a small rosebud. It’s good now, but her first experience with a tattoo will stay with her, no matter how well I did. Letting someone you don’t really know that well have access to your body can leave a lasting mark on you. I’m afraid you’ll have regrets down the road. I want it to be a good, pure experience for you. Save it for your wedding night. You deserve that, Jayne, after what you’ve been through. Don’t come this far to throw it away.”

That was the second time he’d used the word “pure,” and it renewed the blush in her cheeks just as it had before. He was right. The sum total of the time they’d spent together equaled less than a whole day. They hadn’t known each other long enough. But the rejection still stung. She was tired of the “not knowing” and imagining what it must be like to be made love to. It was now just an inconvenient hurdle in her life, and she had lost time to make up for.

Seth tilted her chin up and placed a damnably chaste kiss on her lips and said, “Baby steps.”

She wanted to kick herself for offering so soon. She’d likely scared him off from wanting to get closer to her.

Screw baby steps. I’d like to get laid, thank you very much!

Seth let loose a faint, amused chuckle. “You’re killing me with your little lip pooching out like that. The last thing I want is to disappoint you but I…I know what I’m talking about. I want you to be able to smile at the memory of your first time and have no regrets.” He hugged her, and she noticed the large, hard ridge at his groin and felt a mixture of guilt and disappointment. The twinkle returned to his eyes as he gazed into hers. “I’m leaving before I do something I’ll regret. I’ll give you a call. Right now I need a cold shower.”

He kissed her forehead, and she found that although she was disappointed, her respect for him had only grown. She tried to make heads or tails of her jumbled emotions as she walked him to the door. She never would’ve guessed that she’d meet a guy unwilling to be coerced into sex. For a moment, it’d seemed as though he was reliving some old memory. Maybe he’d had a virgin before and hadn’t enjoyed it. Hell, if first-time sex was that bad, maybe she should just get it over with. The notion was worth considering but didn’t give her much comfort as the sound of his motorcycle faded in the distance and she turned out the lights.

* * * *

His fingers clasped with Tamar’s, Seth reluctantly followed their host down the dim, narrow corridor, echoes of whispering voices and moans bouncing off the walls. The narrow passage originally might’ve been used by servants or reserved for secret access to private rooms in the stately manor house. The corridor now served another purpose entirely. They passed small groups gazing into two-way mirrors at intervals until they were drawn to a halt behind their host, a little rat of a man whom Seth had taken a dislike to the moment Tamar had introduced them earlier that evening. A heavy beat throbbed through the walls as Tamar leaned close, the flesh of her arm cool against his, and whispered, “Henri has arranged something special for us to watch.”

Henri’s smile made Seth shudder as the little man tugged on a rope, drawing the drape that covered the mirror. “This is what I was telling you about, my dear Tamar. For a small investment, you could become very rich in a short time. This scene is a secret video shoot. I have clients willing to pay top dollar the world over.”

Seth knew nothing about this man’s clientele but guessed a lot when he viewed the occupants of the room. Three men, fitted with leather masks to disguise their faces. They were all completely nude and ready for action by the looks of their genitals.
A door in the room opened and another nude, masked man walked in leading a blindfolded, naked young woman. Judging by her gait and the way she giggled, she was either high or drunk, or both. The man leading her directed her onto the bed, and his words were audible over a speaker mounted by the mirror. Seth wanted to walk away but found he was frozen in place, standing next to Tamar.

Unwilling to see what happened next, Seth squeezed Tamar’s hand to get her attention. She ignored him as she watched the men stroking their cocks.

He leaned toward her to whisper, “What is this? I thought you wanted to attend a party.”

Tamar smirked and laid a kiss on his cheek. Her brown eyes were lit with dark lust as she murmured, “We are, Seth. Don’t be a rube. Enjoy the show.”

According to rumor, the parties that occurred at this manor house, located on a country estate outside Paris, were legendary. Seth wondered if Henri made his money with blackmail or with the sale of pornographic material. Either way, this wasn’t Seth’s area of interest or the reason he’d come to Europe. He’d gone out with Tamar tonight to make her happy which seemed more often to be at odds with what made him happy.

She’d become bored with shopping and hadn’t practiced her craft at all in months. He’d realized that becoming a tattoo artist, no matter that she was talented, was one more way Tamar rebelled against her wealthy parents, whom he’d never met. He’d faced the truth that he was there mainly to keep her company at these events, many of which ended with her passing out drunk and spending the next day recovering from a hangover. Seth had already considered the possibility of returning home to the States, with or without her. He wondered what his parents would think of all this.

Tamar sipped her vodka tonic and smirked again as she gazed through the mirror and whispered a question to Henri. Her ultra low-cut white couture dress hung from her painfully thin frame, a stark contrast to the dark tattoos that sleeved both arms, her shoulders, back, and her rib cage. She’d always tended toward thinness, but her lifestyle the last twelve months had caused her to drop even more weight. Designers cooed over her frame, but he’d begun to worry. Ingratiatingly, Henri whispered a reply.

Seth didn’t listen to the conversation emitting from the speakers because it was obvious that the “actor” was simply directing the young woman through loose dialogue for the sake of the camera, flirting with her, and talking dirty in French as he tied her wrists and ankles to the big bed which was fitted for that purpose. Once she was restrained, he played with her, arousing her as she writhed. The other men in the room were motionless, and the young woman obviously couldn’t hear them over the music pumping into the room. The men looked as though they were waiting for their cue.

The lead man finally untied the blindfold, which covered most of the woman’s face. She blinked her eyes blearily, and then her attention was drawn to the interior of the room and finally the three men who stood waiting. She was definitely inebriated, but it didn’t dull the shock on her face when she finally clued in to the fact they were all naked and ready for a gang bang.

Henri clapped his hands lightly and chuckled, obviously pleased. “That look, that expression, that is what makes these sell so well, the sheer authenticity of her reactions and the experience. My clients will pay top dollar for this.”

Seth had no doubt that the young woman hadn’t agreed to this “experience” beforehand. Tamar was riveted as the girl’s chest rose and fell with her rapid breathing, the fear growing in her eyes. “What will happen to her?”

Henri shrugged and made a faint moue with his pudgy lips. “She will be paid well, and pfft,” he said, with a dismissive brushing gesture of his hands.

Seth knew he had to do something. He struggled to lift his foot from the floor, to turn, to help that girl and then walk away from this horrible place. He felt anchored in concrete, unable to move. Why had he come? Tamar glanced at Seth, but any real emotion she felt was hidden beneath her cynical façade as she sipped her drink. Her hands didn’t even shake. Seth wanted to be sick. He broke out in a cold sweat, chills racing over his body.

“No!” Seth bolted upright in his bed, disgust stirring the nausea in his gut. He caught his breath as the quiet of his own dark bedroom settled around him. He wasn’t in Paris. He was in Divine. Time and distance did a lot to ease the anxiety he felt every time he had that damned dream, but neither could do a thing for the guilt he still felt.

He’d tried to stop that scene from happening but he’d been bodily ejected from the hallway and the manor house altogether. Because of the pounding music, nobody in any of the rooms would’ve heard his protests. As far as he knew, the scene and the video shoot had gone forward exactly as Henri had planned. Seth had no idea what had become of the girl.

He gritted his teeth at the recollection of the men standing in the corner waiting their turn—and the shock on the girl’s face when she’d realized why they were there.

He’d had that same dream several times since leaving Europe, but this time it had ended before the horrible reality set in. He shook his head and rested his elbows on his knees, taking deep breaths.

Jayne had questioned why the loss of her virginity was such a big deal to him. This dream reinforced his decision. That girl in Paris had probably not been a virgin. Otherwise she never would’ve been in a place like that, allowing that man to tie her up as a prelude to sex. But she now had a memory she could never erase. He couldn’t fix that but he could keep himself from creating bad memories for Jayne.

She might write erotic stories for a hobby, so it could be argued that she wasn’t innocent. The way she’d blushed when he’d shown her the rose tattoo drawings told him that she was. He remembered that her first tattoo session was the following afternoon and an odd mix of anticipation and dread filled his gut.

I had to go and draw a design that would require her to be practically nude on the table for each session, didn’t I?

He’d worried that he’d hurt her feelings the night before, when he’d declined her request. As he’d given her all the reasons why he couldn’t and wouldn’t give her what she asked for, his inner caveman had been in an uproar, shouting reasons why
he could
give her what she wanted.

It would be impossible to just walk away from her after making love to her, and she’d given no indicator she wanted more. He was single, and in his prime, and normally he would’ve given the offer more thought. But there was something about Jayne, with her innocent, yet seductive, ways that spoke of permanence and commitment that she hadn’t
also
asked for. But his body craved her and the following afternoon was going to test his willpower.

His good intentions were going to be strained to their limits but he wasn’t going to be the one to shortchange her dream. She’d come that far and she deserved it.

What in the fuck have I gotten myself into?